MIDWEST COMPUTER GENEALOGISTS
NEWSLETTER
www.mcgenealogists.org
Volume XXIV
CIVIL WAR STORIES
Marjorie Slavens
On the Fold3 website, Jenny Acshcraft announced
that Fold3 is creating a new feature on the website,
www.fold3.com. This site has a wide variety of
military records and stories from all of the wars from
the Revolutionary War to the present. Because of the
newsletter, as well as my own research, I have
memberships with Ancestry.com, Archives.com, and
Fold3. All of these sites are available at our area
libraries, and some libraries make some genealogy
sites available online.
This month, President Al Morse presents the calendar
of births, marriages, and deaths which he and Dorothy
maintained each year in order to be able to remember
and send cards to family members. My niece created
a calendar each year while her children were growing
up that featured them with pictures of their activities
each of the months. This was a Christmas present that
we appreciated receiving each year, and I still have all
of them; they are historical picture albums. Priscilla
Darling creates picture book biographies of members
of her family, as well as books that feature pictures of
trips she has taken with family members.
This month, Julia Morse has written a history of
Halloween; it has a much longer history than “trick or
treating”, and there is some excellent history for all of
us.
THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER
Al Morse
This article is a rambling of birthdays, weddings, and
deaths in my life and my wife, Dorothy Jean
(Newcomb) Morse’s, life. These include our parents,
grandparents, and sons. This will be done on a
October, 2020
Number 10
monthly basis to reflect our annual calendar. Some
months were very busy, and some were sparse.
Beginning with January, Dorothy's grandparents,
Ralph and Sarah (Gaston) Newcomb, were married on
January 1. My mother, Mildred Catherine (Janssens)
Morse, was 8 months pregnant with her first child
when, on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was
bombed. The thoughts and concerns had to be many
for her because, in addition to expecting the birth of
her first child, her brother and his family were living
in Hawaii at that time. I was born on January 3. Of
course, 77 years later, my dear wife, Dorothy, died on
January 3. That birthday brought tears, yet joy,
knowing that she was no longer suffering from all of
the medical issues she had encountered during her
lifetime. On January 17, my grandparents, Clark
Frank and Alma Dona (Miller) Morse, were married.
I remember their 50th wedding anniversary, when
many people came to congratulate them. On January
18, my nephew, Kevin’s, daughter, Stephanie, was
born. On January 24, Dorothy's grandmother, Lillie
Ethel (Burke) McDaniel, was born.
On February 10, Ralph Newcomb, Dorothy’s
grandfather, was born. On February 18, Dorothy's
mother, Dorothy (McDaniel) Newcomb, was born.
On March 8, 1854, my mother’s father, David
Janssens, was born in Belgium. On March 15,
Dorothy's grandmother, Sarah (Gaston) Newcomb,
was born. My mother died on March 18, 1982. My
grandfather, Clark Frank Morse died on March 23.
My nephew's wife, Susan, was born on March 28. My
youngest son, Steve, and his wife, Kelly, were
married on March 31 in Las Vegas.
Herbert Edgar Newcomb, Dorothy's father, was born
on April 16. Dorothy's birthday was April 21. This
was the same day, but a different year, that my
grandmother, Laura Jessie (Mooney) Janssens, was
born. She and David Janssens were married on April
23, 1889. She had just turned 18 and he was 35. They
had 14 children, and my mother was child number 12.
On April 22, our youngest grandson,Owen, was born.
On May 23, 1939, Laura Janssens died.
On June 10, 1999, my mother-in-law, Dorothy
Newcomb died. On Father's day, June 28, 1972, my
father, Albert Frank Morse, died. The next Fathers
Day, June 17, Dorothy's grandmother, Lillie Ethel
McDaniel, died. The next year, a few days before
Father's Day, Brian, our oldest son, at age 6, had
major surgery. This, of course, caused many concerns.
He did well, and on Father's Day, I had lunch with
him in the hospital. We ordered steak and lobster. He
liked steak so he had it and I had the lobster. On June
27, our nephew, Kevin, was born. On July 11, my
father was born. He died less than a month before his
63 birthday.
On August 11, Dorothy's grandparents, James and
Ethel McDaniel, were married. I remember going to
there 50th wedding anniversary reception at their farm
house. Dorothy was scolded by her grandmother
because Dorothy and I were married exactly one week
later on August 18, 1963. Her grandmother thought
that we should have been married on the 11th . Our
wedding was a week later because I graduated from
college on August 17. My brother, Carl, was born on
August 22. My grandfather, Clark Frank Morse, was
born on August 26.
On September 2, my brother's wife, Marjorie, was
born. They were married on September 23. My
youngest son, Steve, was born on September 29. He
came home from the hospital on his older brothers 3rd
birthday. That was October 4. Dorothy was very good
about making sure each son had a special birthday.
Also in October, Dorothy's grandfather, James
McDaniel, was born on the 8th. Our older grandson,
Wyatt, was born on October 14. My mother was born
on October 21. Dorothy's grandfather, Ralph
Newcomb, was born October 22. My grandmother,
Alma Dona Morse, was born on October 28. On
November 4, Dorothy's grandmother, Sarah (Gaston)
Newcomb, was born. My parents, Albert and Mildred
(Janssens) Morse, were married on November 6,
1940.
On December 3, Dorothy's dad, Herb Newcomb, died.
On December 10, Dorothy's grandfather, James
McDaniel, died. They did not die in the same year, but
they were one year apart. On December 16, my
grandmother, Dona Morse, died. On December 23,
my daughter-in-law, Kelly, was born. On December
24, Dorothy's parents, Herb and Dorothy (McDaniel)
Newcomb, were married.
I never did know my maternal grandparents and
Dorothy never knew her paternal grandfather, but we
were reminded through the years by our parents. Over
the years we would label our calendars with birthdays
and weddings to send cards. Of course, names were
removed over the years because of deaths, but also
names were added because of births. Some months
were not active but some had a lot to remember. That
is what made me _ think of this article because
August, September, and October were very busy
months.
HALLOWEEN FOR OUR ANCESTORS
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
Julia Morse
There are a lot of Midwesterners who love Halloween.
Neighbors now compete with yard displays boasting
coffins, skeletons, ghostly figures, dismembered
bodies, monsterish creatures, giant spiders, cobwebs,
and haunted-house motifs. Some put a cheerful spin
on it with happy ghosts and smiling pumpkins amid
the tombstones. At my Bible-believing church a
couple of years ago, a sweet lady was giving out iced
witch-hat cookies during the donut break between
worship songs to Jesus.
As most children, I loved dressing up in costume and
eating candy. However, I found the holiday emphasis
on death and dark spirits confusingly out-of-place
with the values and messages of my family and
community. I accepted it as similar to make believe,
dark fairy tales, but I wondered why we celebrated
these things.
Regardless of your point of view, the question comes:
How did our ancestors experience Halloween? How
did they come to pass down this odd heritage to us? I
decided to turn to old newspaper accounts to unravel
a bit about how Halloween played out in our Midwest
U.S. ancestors’ lives.
Halloween in the Midwest (1800s and 1900s)
U.S. Midwest newspapers of the early and mid 1800's
suggest a very different type of Halloween from what
we know today. There seems to have been little
participation of adults with Halloween at this time.
Rather, the young people were presumed to be at the
root of one or two activities: (1) pranking or (2)
playing with traditional superstitious divinations.
Young boys somehow got word that Halloween was
a night that gave them license to unleash devilry in
their local communities.The milder pranks involved
misplacing wagons, livestock, and _ fences.
Community-minded elders annually lamented costly
destruction of property on this night.
This 1860 writer in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania
describes the state of the holiday:
“Tonight is Halloween. From time immemorial this
has been the occasion when all manner of quaint and
fantastic tricks are played off—when an old grudge is
wiped out or a joke paid off, with interest. The next
morning, merchants generally find their store-boxes
piled up in a conglomerate heap; professional men see
their cards staring at them from over the doors of
stables and other out-of-the-way places; and farmers
occasionally discover their cows in the mow or their
wagons on the roof of a barn. The sport is now and
then varied by building fences across the roads and
streets, and by pulling down out-buildings.
“Particularly, it was a hard old time on cabbages.
Every youngster feels as if it devolves on him to
“hook” and destroy every cabbage-head he can come
across.”
Halloween is the anniversary of the good old Scotch
time when the elves and fairies and witches were
supposed to stalk forth on the earth and hold a grand
pow-wow. And the gay lads and lassies then met
together. ... Halloween then was a time for mirth and
gaety; now it is a time when wild young gentlemen
can ventilate their superabundant deviltry with
impunity.” [1]
Interestingly, damage concerns in the earlier 1800's
focused much on cabbage patches! Here are some
descriptions from 1866 Ohio papers:
“Young America reminded our citizens on
Wednesday night, the 31* ult., that it was Halloween
by beating on doors, stealing cabbage and other
deviltry.” (“The Spirit of Democracy”, Woodsfield,
Ohio, 6 Nov, 1866‘)
“Even we can remember when Allhallow e’en was
considered one of the most important and joyful
evenings that only observance here will be by the
boys, who will celebrate the occasion with much noise
and confusion, and the destruction of any unfortunate
cabbage heads which may be found exposed the frost
upon that occasion.” (Lima, Ohio Democrat”, 31 Oct
CPPige patch damage was different than random
pranking or masquerading as roaming spirits of evil.
It was the result of young people perpetuating a
Halloween tradition once dear to peasantry of the
British Isles. Young people headed into the cabbage
patch to divine information about their future spouse
they pulled up in the dark. This was part of a series
of superstitious rituals documented by Robert Burns
in 1785 in his long, lighthearted poem, "Hallowe’en".
Burns’ poem records several other superstitious
divinations that the unmarried could perform to learn
about their future. There were tests of eating an apple
at a mirror, winnowing in the wind, drying the sleeve
of a garment, etc., all which predict aspects of one’s
future spouse. There were quite enough to keep a
party of young people busy and merry long after a
cabbage patch had been decimated.
An 1867 newspaper piece originating from The
Pittsburg Post cites some “merry” games from English
Halloween added to the divination practices,
particularly “bobbing for apples,” as well as the
beloved custom of nutcracking and roasting chestnuts
to determine whether the course of their love will
prove true. Other “good old fashioned Halloween
festivities” played out in the United States: “Cider in
the jug, nuts upon the hearth, and apples on the table.”
He concludes, “therefore, “Let us not let this good old
festival die out in our midst.” [2]
However, a writer, at the same time, from the
Davenport, lowa “Quad City Times” after describing
similar merry games and practices of the British Isles,
laments a growing tension in the balance between the
old-time parties and pranking: “Old time customs are
disregarded, and fun of a wicked kind is substituted.
The mischief done by youths on the strength of
Hallowe’en is generally so wanton, that the police
officers have to interfere.” [3]
By the latter 1800's, costly damage to property as a
result of pranksters was an increasing problem. Cities
with active policing sometimes claimed to have a
better handle on the situation, but property owners in
smaller towns and rural areas faced the Halloween
night (or the morning of revelation) with dread.
An 1883 Marshalltown Iowa newspaper writer
expressed the dread of the townspeople: “This is
Hallowe’en. Take down your signs, chain down your
gate, lock up your barn, tie a bull-dog to your front
door, go to a prayer meeting, but keep an eye open for
a pumpkin coming through the window.” [4]
A Windsor, Missouri editor wrote in 1896:
“No one objects to the boys indulging in a little
harmless and injurious pastime, but when it comes to
wrecking and destroying the property of their
neighbors and friends to such an extent that the owner
must “dig up” a good dollar or two to repair the
damage, it is time to call a halt. A survey of Windsor
on a morning succeeding Hallowe’en, would lead one
not acquainted with the circumstances . . . to believe
that a small sized cyclone had visited the town,
twisting gates from their fastenings, wrenching fences
from their moorings, dismembering wagons and
vehicles of all descriptions, tearing up sidewalks,
toppling over “small” houses and tearing up Jack and
playing thunder generally”’.[5] (We infer that the
“small” houses likely refer to outhouses (privies.)
Formally announced home Halloween parties started
to become a more common newspaper mention in the
latter 1800's. In the early 1900's, Halloween parties
were quite common, increasingly employed to channel
the young people from destructive practices. Even
churches were announcing Halloween parties.
Halloween practices in the United States took a
dramatic turn in the 1930's and 1940's with the
emergence of "trick-or-treating." A few newspaper
accounts in different parts of the U.S. and Canada
describe enterprising youngsters calling at a home
asking for a reward in exchange for not damaging
their property, and how glad property owners were to
bestow coins or treats in the exchange. While some
historians today draw parallels between trick-or-
treating and ancient pagan rituals, the 1930's
newspapers tended to credit the young people with
adopting the tactics of "gangster extortion" that was
nonetheless welcomed as a happy solution to reduce
Halloween destruction. [6], [7] It quickly caught on
nation-wide.
New York writer Hal Boyle, in 1942, explained his
regrets on the new transformation of Halloween: “It
was a fine thing a generation ago, and I suppose it still
is in many places. We had our apple bobbing parties,
then as now. But the real delirious pleasure was to be
allowed to stay up a few hours late playing harmless
pranks. We soaped a few storefronts. We made
horrendous noises against neighbor windows with a
notched spool—and ran in panic. .. There was no real
vandalism. The soaped windows could be cleaned
with a razor blade and a little elbow grease. But
apparently event that small price became too much for
some adults to pay for the thrill the youngsters got on
their one night out. For now in many communities,
they have formal pares and parties to keep the kids in
check. Store owners get the children to draw pictures
on the windows with washable paint and award
prizes.” [8]
Early hosting of "haunted houses" in private homes
began about the same time and is also said to have
been spurred by the hope of further distracting
Halloween pranking. It was later followed by
community haunted houses (often for charity) and
theme park attractions. Disney’s Haunted Mansion
was first opened in Disneyland in 1961. Its developers
initially wrestled over whether it should be scary or
fun and settled on a compromise of both.[9]
The mid-1900’s was an era in which the popular
culture separated the evil nature from the macabre,
placing it in a fun and loving world. Casper was a
friendly ghost of the 1930’s comic strip who later had
fun on early family television. Popular movies such as
"Topper" (with Cary Grant), and "Harvey" (with
James Stewart) all featured comical situations with
ghosts. 1964 television brought not one, but two
different loving and zany monsterish families--“The
Addams Family,” and “The Munsters”—weekly into
the American family living room, along with the
beloved witch, Samantha turned American housewife
on the comedy “Bewitched. All three of these shows
became successful in reruns targeted to after-school
children throughout the 1970’s.
However, television continued to make space for
“scary” Halloween themes, and the late 1900’s
culminated in Halloween-themed mainstream horror
movies that decidedly put the reality of evil back into
Halloween and drove adult participation to a new
level.
Early Halloween Origins
Halloween foundations, wrapped around the idea of
roaming evil spirits, traditionally have been thought to
have originated around the idea of Celtic Druids prior
to Christianity's reach. The Celtic festival of
summer’s end, Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween), was
marked the day in the year in which dead souls
roamed on the earth. Sacrifices were made to pagan
gods in large bonfires. Catholic popes applied
measures to adapt the beloved pagan customs into the
Roman Catholic the All-Saints Day and All Hallows
Eve celebrations. Some Lutheran, Catholics, and
German historians now dispute the pagan/Druidic
origins of Halloween, stating that the Druidic
practices of Samhain were separate and perhaps had
even died out long before the fascination of death and
evil spirits became associated with All-Saints Day in
the early Christian church.
Regardless of the origins, we do know that, for our
ancestors in the middle ages, whether Celtic or mid-
European, death and the dark spiritual world were a
part of their reality. Certainly, the Catholic teaching of
the necessity to pray for dead souls stuck in a
temporary purgatory tended to keep the image of
unsettled, roaming spirits in mind. The Reformation
taught from the Bible that ghosts purporting to be
human souls were frauds (either demonic or earthly).
However, ghost story culture remains persistent.
The witches, goblins, and other evil spirits in the old
fairy tales remind us of the prevalence of spiritual evil
passed down from folk stories from long ago and
popularly shared with children over the centuries.
After two centuries of the Enlightenment, the
Brother's Grimm published their treasury of tales in
1811. Their counterparts in France, Russia, and
Scandinavia all share elements of witchcraft, goblins,
and other spiritual evil, though in some it is more
"magical" than evil. The implication is that the
magical elements of these tales were not meant to be
believed as real. The prevalence of fairy tale culture
largely explains why it was so acceptable for U.S.
school children of the 1900s to dress up as witches
and ghosts or draw pictures of dancing skeletons as
fictional characters, "all in fun."
The Halloween of our Earlier Ancestors Comes to the
Americas
Most historians claim very little observance of
Halloween in the United states until after the 1840s
influx of Irish immigrants at the time of the Irish
potato famine.
Prior to the 1840s, newspapers in the British Isles
make occasional mention of the old superstitious
Halloween celebrations as cherished, nostalgic
customs of the country folk. The practices were
already being perceived as dying out.[10] Descriptions
of “the old customs” seem similar to the descriptions
of the superstitious rites performed in Robert Burns’
“Halloween” of the same general time period:
Some merry, friendly, country-folks,
Together did convene,
To burn their nuts, and pile their shocks of wheat,
And have their Halloween.
Full of fun that night.”[11]
An 1812 writer in The “Royal Cornwall Gazette”,
attests that the superstitious rites of Christmas and
Halloween were done more in fun than in actual
belief:
“The humbler ranks have been accused of superstition
because the stocking is still thrown, the pd with nine
peas hid over the door, and all the little ceremonies so
admirably depicted by Burns in his Hallowe’en still
practiced. These, however, are now generally looked
upon as a diversion, and few have faith in their
efficacy; for in our days the poor have as good
common sense as their superiors. These diversions
come to them but once a year, and it is to be hoped
they may long continue to practice them.”[12]
Our Puritan ancestors in New England were opposed
to unbiblical, secular practices associated with both
Halloween and the English Christmas traditions. Of
course, we know from the sad story of the Salem
Witchcraft Trials, that the Puritans were aware that
witchcraft was a real thing mentioned in the Bible
(abhorrent to God, Deuteronomy 18:10-12) and which
they believed to still be practiced by some. This
sometimes led to a sort of counter-superstition of
beliefs in black cats and other signs of witches.
Likewise, the Dutch embraced the reformation and
largely renounced both Pagan and Catholic traditions
of Halloween in the 16th century, so some say that
Halloween had no part in the early Dutch settlement
of New Amsterdam and other parts of New York and
Pennsylvania. However, an 1864 writer of Cleveland,
Ohio attributed the Scottish practice of Cabbage
divination to “the first Dutch Settlers of Pennsylvania
and New York.” Washington Irving's story "The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow", paints the picture of a
Dutch village in New York in the late 1700's,
following the American Revolution, that was rumored
to be bewitched. A superstitious schoolteacher,
Ichabod Crane, becomes frightened by ghostly stories
told at a harvest party at a Dutch homestead, and a
culminating prank embodying the ghost of the
“headless horseman.” The story reminds us of a
cultural traditions of harvest parties and ghost stories,
apart from Halloween, which later easily merged into
the Halloween culture.
Europeans today—even the North European
Protestant areas—celebrate the originally Roman
Catholic “St. Martin’s Day” on the 11th of November
with traditions such as bonfires and the carrying of
lanterns that may be the result of early co-mingling of
the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon harvest festivals. Oddly,
the St. Martin’s celebrations did not seem to gain a
foothold among the German-American immigrant
communities.
The British-European histories seem to mesh with the
early newspaper accounts: Halloween for our U.S.
ancestors was little more than a night of pranks and a
few dying hand-me-down superstition games for
young people, until the 1900’s, when a desire to
redirect young people and a penchant for finding the
good in fairy tales turned Halloween into a nation-
wide party event for young and old.
SELECTED SOURCES
[1] “Local and Personal”, “The Ebensburg
Alleghenian”, Ebensburg, PA, 1 Nov 1860, p. 3.
[2] “The Pittsburg Post”, quoted in “Halloween”,
“Daily Ohio Statesman”, Columbus, OH, 31 Oct.,
1867, P. 3.
[3] “Hallowe’ en”, Quad-City times”, Davenport, IA,
31 October, 1867, P. 1.
[4] “The Times Recorder’, Marshalltown, IA,
reported in “the Muscatine Weekly Journal”,
Muscatine, IA, 9 November, 1883, P. 5.
[5] “Hallowe’en Fiends”, “The Windsor Review”, 5
Nov, 1896, P. 5.
[6] “ Trick or Treat”, “The Bend Bulletin”, Bend,
Ore, 4 November, 1936, P. 4.
[7] “Had a Mixer”, “The Daily Chronicle”, Decalb,
IL, 1 Nov, 1938, P. 3.
[8] Hal Boyle, “Boyle Morns for Halloween As It
Was When He Was Young”, “Jefferson Post
Tribune”, Jefferson City, MO.
[9] “The Haunted Mansion”, Wikipedia.
Http.wikipedia.org, Accessed Oct, 2020.
[10] “Halloween From the Pen of One of the Olden
Time”, “The Waterford Mirror’, Waterford, Ireland,
20 Nov, 1824. P. 4.
[11] Robert Burns, “Halloween”,Modern English
Translation, Translater unknown, “Myths for Kids,
http://www.mythicjourneys.org/mythkids oct06 bu
rms/html
[12] “Christmas-Keeping,” “The Royal Cornwall
Gazette”, Falmouth Packet, and General Advertiser,
Truro, Cornwall, England, 22 Dec 1821, p. 4.
INTRODUCING CIVIL WAR STORIES!
[For the online publication of this newsletter, this
article has been modified to insure it respects
copyright.]
Jenny Ashcraft of Fold3 discusses their new "Civil
War Stories Project" which ultimately intends to
integrate stories of battles, regiments, and individuals
all in one place.
She discusses the phases of the project: "Starting
today, you can head to our Civil War Stories page
and learn details about some of the major Civil War
battles, including what regiments fought in each
battle.
"And then, starting with North Carolina Regiments,
you will be able to see regiment timelines. When did
they muster in? Where did they fight? Who were the
officers? Eventually, we will add the ability to refine
down to company. By the time this project is
complete, you’ll be able to map out your soldier’s
movements throughout the war.
"Finally, we’ll add individual soldiers state by state
beginning with North Carolina, followed by New
York."
The project invites individuals to share family
records, photographs, or journals that have been
passed down. See the following link for more
details: https://www.ancestry.com/civil-war-stories/
add-photo.
For more information, read her full article here:
https://blog.fold3.com/introducing-civil-war-stories/
DAVID WELTY IN THE CIVIL WAR
(Part I)
Marjorie Slavens
David Welty (1833-1862) was the sixth child of
John Welty (1800-1875) and Mary Magdalene
(Polly) Miller, (1801-1844) and a brother of my
great grandfather, Henry Welty (1837-1911). Both
were farmers on their father’s land in Rush Creek
Township , Fairfield County, Ohio before the war.
Two of their great great grandfathers, Peter Welty
and Michael Miller, came from Germany with
other Mennonites who traveled from Germany to
Holland and then by British ships to Philadelphia
and then by land to Lancaster County , later York
County, Pennsylvania in 1727.
The grandfather of David and Henry, John Welty,
Jr. (1765-1827), his wife, Elizabeth, and their
children first settled in Bullskin Township, Fayette
County in western Pennsylvania after his father’s
death in 1794. He then settled in Fairfield County,
Ohio around 1810 where David, Henry, and their 7
brothers and sisters were born.
David was a farmer and a teacher. He bought land
in Howard Township, Tama County, Iowa July 28,
1856. He planned to move to Iowa following the
war. David enlisted in Company D, 2nd Regiment
of Ohio Volunteers in September, 1861. He was
mustered in at Camp Goddard, Ohio. He was
elected a corporal on June 6, 1863. He was in five
battles, Winchester, Cedar Creek, Morris Island,
Harrison's Landing, and Fort Wagner. His unit was
consolidated with Company K at City Point,
Virginia. He was wounded at Fort Wagner and
taken on a hospital ship to New York, where he died
July 29, 1863. He was buried in Cypress Hills
National Cemetery, 625 Jamaica Avenue, Brooklyn,
New York. So far as we know, my mother’s brother,
Edward Charles Welty, (1913-2012), as a result of
my mother’s research, was the only family member
to visit David’s grave .
Another brother, John 1835-1910), lived in Illinois
at the time of the Civil War. He enlisted at Ottawa,
LaSalle County, Illinois, and was mustered in the
army at Camp Butler, Illinois on August 31, 1861.
He served in the 26th Infantry, Company E and was
discharged August 14, 1864 just before the Battle of
Atlanta. He was a corporal in the army at the time
of his discharge. Following the war, he lived near
his oldest brother Soloman, 1826-1891) in Cerro
Gordo, Piatt County, Illinois; he was a carpernter.
Henry Welty was a farmer on his father’s land
during most of the war. He served in the Civil War
as a private in Company F, Regiment 159 of Ohio.
He enlisted May 2, 1864 and was mustered out with
his regiment on August 22, 1864. In 1866, he joined
his brother, Abraham (1829-1873) in
LasalleCounty, Illinois, where he farmed and taught
for a year before moving to Jasper County,
Missouri. There, he was a teacher, and he married
one of his students, Catharine Mary Eppright,
daughter of Jonathan Eppright and Edy Meadows,
who came to Jasper County from Indiana in 1840.
Catharine’s brother, George Eppright, was the first
white child born in Duval Township, Jasper County.
Henry and Catharine Welty lived on a farm with
their eight children in northern Jasper County.
Edward Alonzo, their sixth child, was my
grandfather.
A cousin gave Mother some letters their grandfather
received from his family in Ohio. He was never able
to return to Fairfield County to visit them. Most of
the money he used to purchase his farm was from
the estates of his father, John Welty, his
grandmother, Elizabeth Brumbaugh Miller, and part
of the sale of the farm which his brother, David had
purchased in Tama County, Iowa. Their farm was
just south of Nashville, Barton County, where both
and two of their daughters, a son-in-law and one
grandchild are buried. Henry died in 1911 at the
Federal Soldiers Home in Leavenworth, Kansas.
Mother received copies of three letters which David
Welty wrote to Henry while he was serving in the
war. David also wrote to their younger sister, Mary
Magdalene Welty Thompson (1839-1893), who
continued to live in Fairfield County, Ohio near
their father’s farm. She kept Henry’s
correspondence, and one of her descendants sent
copies to Mother of David’s letters to Henry
during the war, in which he described his war
experiences.Next month, we will look at David’s
letters, which present some aspects of his military
experiences.
OFFICERS
Al Morse, President
Byron Gilbreath, Treasurer
Marjorie Slavens , Newsletter Editor
Julia Morse, Website Administrator, Digital
Librarian
